Project Ukraine. Different views on neighbourhood, co-organised by the International Cultural Centre in Krakow and National Art Museum of Ukraine tells about two neighbouring countries with focus on Ukrainian artworks and most of them are presented for Polish audience for the first time. This different view on neighbourhood, where mutual perceptions of each other come into play, brings the two countries even closer together.
A joint Polish-Ukrainian analysis of cultural and historical narratives referred to as “Ukrainian myths” encourages a reflection on contiguity of Ukraine and Poland, their history and their present in the perspective of neighbourhood and mutual understanding. They give an idea of the viability of myths and their contemporary incarnations, making it possible to trace the canon of Ukrainian identity, but also to take a closer look at today’s Ukraine. The narrative also collides sporadically with Russia and the Soviet Union, occasionally with Turkey and the Islamic world. It is illustrated with works of Ukrainian and Polish art including contemporary artworks. The project is aimed to present to the Polish public a visual self-portrait of their closest neighbours and the contemporary cultural context of mutual Polish-Ukrainian relations.
The exhibition showcases the most outstanding artists, whose work is related to the main stages of the development of art, from the late 17th century to the present day. Achronological, nonlinear development of the exhibition composition was used in the construction of the exposition, which creates a space for one’s own associations and interpretations. Contemporary art has become an effective tool for deconstructing traditional ideas. Covering a large period from the 17th to the 21st centuries, the exhibition consists of separate blocks: Prologue, Landscape, Bread, Cossacks / Sarmatians, Conquest, Statehood, House, Epilogue. In each block of the exhibition there is a historical coverage of the myth and a provoked discussion about the current state of affairs.
On display are the works of the Ukrainian bard Taras Shevchenko, the Polish masters such as Józef Brandt, Jan Stanisławski, Leon Wyczółkowski, and the Ukraine-born Russian realist Ilya Repin, who was fascinated with Jan Matejko’s painting. These 19th-century canvases are juxtaposed with the works of the early 20th-century modernists – Heorhii Narbut, Victor Palmov, Lev Kramarenko – and contemporary artists, such as those using the language of pop-art, social art, Western advertising, and Soviet propaganda, for instance, Oleh Tistol, Roman Minin, Vlada Ralko, Nikita Kadan or the “Open Group” Association, which represented Ukraine at the Venice Biennale in 2019. The work of SVITER-group and Ivan Svitlychny, shot in the backstage of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, was created especially for the project.
It reveals the connections of Ukrainian politics with historical myths. The second important element of the project was the Lada Nakonechna’s site-specific project, created in collaboration with Polish artist Monika Drożyńska as a result of their research – “Hugs”, opened at NAMU on September 25, 2021. This project became a kind of interactive “open finale” of the exhibition. It connected two platforms, the ICC and the NAMU, to understand the current state of Polish-Ukrainian relations.
This is the first time such a representative selection of Ukrainian art has been on display in Poland. At its core are the works from the most important Ukrainian collection – the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv, accompanied by the works from other prominent Ukrainian museums: the National Reserve “Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra”, Museum of Theatre, Music and Cinema Arts of Ukraine, National Museum “Kyiv Art Gallery”, National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, and from Polish collections: National Museums in Krakow, Warsaw and Wroclaw, Arsenal Gallery in Białystok and the Jagiellonian Library, as well as Polish and Ukrainian private collections, contemporary artists.
The exhibition is open from September 17, 2021 to January 16, 2022 at the ICC Gallery at Rynek Główny 25 in Krakow.
Authors of the exhibition concept and curators
Oksana Barshynova (NAMU), Żanna Komar (ICC), with Anna Lazar